Busy Cooking, Sunday's aren't for resting!

Back in the fall, I knew I had to be away from home for a couple of nights, so to make things easier, I prepared a couple of meals ahead of time for the family.  I spent an afternoon getting things prepared from some recipes I found on Pinterest.  Things went well and I didn't worry about what Brian and the kids would eat while I was gone.

Enter January, I have Tang Soo for the little guy on Wednesday and carpool for Paige on Thursday.  I like to cook, one would think I would have it all planned out, but I am also a procrastinator.  Sometimes I do my best work under pressure, but not dinner.

I have been pinning recipes like crazy.  I have also been clearing out the freezer to prepare and freeze a good deal of meals so that I can stop stressing on Wednesday and Thursday.  I promised a few people I would share what I did, so here goes...

I sat down with the sale circulars and compared prices for the things I would need.  I know a lot of people use coupons, I do when I make the time to collect them and sort them and cut them...but did you know you can save money just by sitting down and looking at the papers?  I made a list from the Acme circular and a list from the Fresh and Greens circular.  Acme had a special on bagged produce, $1 a bag for carrots, celery, broccoli/carrots, coleslaw mix, mushrooms, so I stocked up.  Fresh and Greens had a special on boneless chicken, $1.99 a pound (compared to the $3.99 at Acme) so I REALLY stocked up on that.

There are many pins on Pinterest for crockpot meals from the freezer and pre-made meals that also give a shopping list which is great, BUT, a lot of those meals didn't seem appealing to me.  I love soups and stews, I am actually having split pea soup that I made Saturday night, for breakfast...BUT, kids aren't especially fond of soup, and soup for dinner several times a week?  No thank you.  So, I decided that it was better for us if I ventured out on my own and gathered my own recipes.

Crock pot Chicken Teriyaki
The original recipe can be found here.  This is what I did to alter it for my purposes.

1 large (1 pound) chicken breast
1 chicken boullion cube
1 cup water
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 spoonful minced garlic
1 bag of fresh broccoli and carrots

I added all the ingredients into a ziplock bag, wrote the instructions and date and this is what it looks like:

I have three of these dinners waiting for us.

I was asked when I began this if I was going to do "clean" recipes.  Well, I am sure that "clean" eating is different to different people.  I am more of a moderation/non- prepared person, I like to eat what I want, but know where things came from, so if I want cookies, I make them from scratch, and give most of them away.  We don't eat prepared food so if we have chicken nuggets, it is chicken I have breaded and fried myself. To me, while these aren't the healthiest recipes, they are clean in that I prepared them, I know what is in them.  Enough of my soap box.

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that my favorite food to make is Sweet and Sour Chicken.   I knew I had to figure out a way to make it easy to prepare.  So, I made three bags of prepared chicken for my wonderful Sweet and Sour chicken.  I set up an assembly line so to speak:

 

That is more than 4 pounds of chicken, an egg, and gluten free Bisquick.  For my health reasons, I try to avoid any excess gluten.  I have used cornstarch and rice flour as well for breading with great success.  After breading, I pan fry the chicken in batches using coconut oil.  I let the "nuggets" cool completely on a baking sheet prior to bagging.

 

 

I now have the chicken ready for this recipe for Sweet and Sour Chicken and Fried Rice.  I will make the fried rice later ready to freeze.  To prepare this meal, all I have to do is get out the chicken, make up the sauce and stick it in the oven and the rice in the microwave.

 

 

Two of my recipes I got here, though I altered them to fit my needs.

 

Honey Sesame Chicken

1 lb boneless chicken
3 tbsp coconut oil
1 cup honey
2 tbsp sesame seeds
1/2 cup soy sauce (LaChoy, gluten free)
2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 package stir fry veggies

 

A little tip about "gluten free", if something is labled "gluten free" they charge extra for it.  Chances are, if you look, you CAN find things sans gluten.  Soy sauce typically has gluten in it.  LaChoy soy sauce is not labled gluten free, however, it is not made with a wheat by-product.  While I would typically choose Kikkoman, their "gluten free" soy sauce is more than a dollar more than LaChoy.

I have three bags of these meals and all I have to do is add rice.  Thankfully I purchased a rice cooker from my local Swap and Sell on Facebook for $5.  It was brand new and a life saver!

I made three meals of the Beef Stroganoff as well.

Beef Stroganoff

2 minced onions
3 lb. stew beef
2 packages chopped mushrooms
1 32 ounce container sour cream
3 servings of  'cream of' soup found here (again, I am as gluten free as I can be, and don't like prepared foods, I made my own "cream of" stock)
2 8 ounce bars cream cheese
salt
pepper

For this recipe, I had to alter to get it to work since I wasn't using a can of soup as the base.  I had to actually prepare the base by adding milk and cooking.  I went ahead and added the cream cheese and sour cream and then split the sauce between the three bags, which is what I did with the onions, beef, and mushrooms.  I did buy some egg noodles but will probably just use rice since it is gluten free.

I also purchased a brand new food processor on my local swap and sell for $7, I used it to dice the onions.  Completely worth the $7!

 The end result looks like this,

After preparing the meals I have 3 Beef Stroganoff, 3 Chicken Teriyaki, 3 Honey Sesame Chicken, 3 chicken nuggets for Sweet and Sour Chicken.  My freezer looks like this,

I also have 2 meatloafs (I always prepare extra meatloafs) that are behind yesterday's meals.  My goal is to prepare meals each week to add to this shelf based upon what is on sale.

I added it up and each meal is less than $6 each.  Of course, I had some things on hand, the major expenses were purchased yesterday, chicken, beef, fresh veggies, honey was more than $8.  I am a big fan of Asian based recipes...a family of four cannot eat at an Asian restaurant for less than $30-40, so SCORE!  I would love if you would share your favorite freezer recipes!